


'twas the night before christmas

by jemmasimmmons



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Christmas Eve, Christmas Fluff, F/M, bookshop owner!jemma, meet cute, single parent!fitz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 12:03:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17022273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jemmasimmmons/pseuds/jemmasimmmons
Summary: "Against her better judgement, Jemma looks up and meets the man’s eye through the glass. He is gazing at her beseechingly, pleadingly, and she can tell he is shivering despite being well wrapped up in a thick scarf and gloves. She is struck by his eyes and how blue they are, and how the warm glow from the Christmas lights hung across the door softens them somehow.Jemma groans inwardly.She knew she shouldn’t have looked at him, because now she will have to let him in."Jemma is hoping for a miracle this Christmas Eve, Fitz is searching for a very special book. A Christmas AU in a bookshop.





	'twas the night before christmas

**Author's Note:**

> merry christmas! this was inspired by the campaigns to shop local this christmas, and jemma's bookshop is based on the independent bookshop in my own city. i love going there and i hope this conveys how cosy and welcoming it is in there.
> 
> the title comes from the poem 'a visit from st. nicholas' by clement clarke moore. i hope you enjoy this!!

 

 

Time behaves differently on Christmas Eve.

Jemma remembers this from being a child. She remembers how the hours had seemed to draw themselves out, doubling in length as she tried to focus on her book or play with her toys, the slim black hands on the clock stretching out their sixty minutes with painstaking care. Then, all of a sudden, time would speed up and it would be bedtime before she knew where she was, and she was hanging up her stocking and putting a mince pie and a carrot out for Father Christmas and the reindeers before being bundled into bed, ready for the excitement of the next day.

Now that she is older, Jemma knows that she had felt like this due to anticipation: impatience for the day to end, then a rush of adrenaline once she knew that Christmas was only a night’s sleep away. But today, as she sits on her stool behind the cash register waiting for the trading day to come to a close, she gets the distinct impression that time is playing tricks on her again.

With her chin dropped in her hand, Jemma gazes at the clock. It hangs on the wall opposite the desk, above the shelf filled with cooking books. This time of year, that shelf is heaving with manuals on how to bake the best Christmas cake, the most impressive vol-au-vents, the most flavourful roast turkey. With their glossy spines and glitter embossed titles, they have sold well. Perfection, Jemma reflects, is always marketable.

The hands of the clock tick on, reminding her that there is only ten minutes to go until it is five o’clock, and she will switch off the lights on the Christmas tree next to the poetry display and lock the door of the Book Cave for two whole days. It feels like an age before the next click of the second hand, and yet it still comes far too soon for Jemma’s liking.

On the one hand, she is desperate to leave. It has been a bad day, sales-wise; Christmas Eve usually is. She has had a few last-minute gift buyers, all choosing hard-backed, brightly-coloured books that will look impressive once unwrapped, and a couple of her old regulars, who she suspects made their purchases out of kindness to her rather than necessity. Despite this, when she checks the till, Jemma’s heart sinks to discover that she has taken only £124.98 since nine am.

Yet, when she gazes around the cosy ground floor of the shop, cheerfully decorated with tinsel and fairy-lights, there is an ache in her chest that makes her reluctant to shut up shop. This is the first year she will be spending Christmas on her own, her parents having flown out to New York earlier that morning.

‘You won’t mind, will you, darling?’ her mother had enquired anxiously when they’d told her their plans over three months ago. ‘It’s our thirtieth anniversary, Dad wants to do something special.’

Jemma had told her no, of course she didn’t mind. They’d see each other at New Year, and besides, she had the shop to think about.

She’d begun working at the Book Cave during her undergraduate degree, hiding her textbooks under the counter as she manned the till on Saturdays. The summer after she’d graduated, the owner had come to her with a proposition. He was retiring, he said, and needed a manager he could trust to oversee things. Was she interested? Jemma’s answer had been an immediate _yes_. The Book Cave was a small shop, with a winding back staircase leading to an even smaller second floor and stockroom, but its higgledy-piggledy layout and warm green walls had become almost a second home to her, one that she finds she is now reluctant to leave for the cold welcome of her lonely flat.

If ever there was a time for a Christmas miracle, Jemma thinks glumly, this was certainly it.

The clock strikes five, and one glance at her watch corroborates the time. Taking her keys in hand with a sigh, Jemma slips off the stool and walks around the counter.

There are two steps down from the main mezzanine to the lower one where the door is, and as she walks down them, Jemma notices a lone figure walking down the street opposite, framed by the Christmas lights. She shakes her head as she reaches up to put her key in the first lock; some people truly did leave it all to the last minute.

‘No, no, wait!’

The cry from the man makes Jemma jump, and she drops the keys. She is just picking them up when he reaches the door and raps hesitantly on the glass.

‘We’re closed,’ Jemma says helpfully. To illustrate her point, she flips the OPEN sign hanging on the door, so it reads CLOSED. ‘Merry Christmas.’

‘No, no, please.’ The man has one palm pressed against the door. ‘There’s just one thing I need to get.’

‘Well, you should have got it an hour ago.’ Jemma keeps her head down as she fiddles with the lock. Despite her no-nonsense tone, she knows that if she looks him in the eye she will waver, and have to let him in. ‘We’re closed now.’

‘I know.’ The man sounds so miserable that she almost gives in right then and there. ‘I know, and I’m so sorry. This is so unlike me, but there truly is something inside that I need to get. I…’ He hesitates. ‘I had someone it put to one side earlier.’

Jemma is about to scoff and tell him that she has been the only person to be here all day and has done nothing of the sort, but then she pauses. There _had_ been fifteen minutes at lunchtime, when Mack from the coffee place next door had watched the register while she ran to grab a sandwich, that she’d been missing from the shop. Perhaps Mack had put something away for this man and forgotten to tell her about it?

‘Was…was this at about twelve o’clock?’

‘Yes!’ His reply is so quick it is almost a yelp. ‘Yes…yes, it was at lunchtime. I remember now.’

Jemma frowns and, to avoid looking into his face, chooses to direct her gaze to his hair instead as she looks up. He has dusty brown curls cut close, covered with tiny drops of moisture. It must be raining, she thinks dismally. Rain would make for an even grimmer walk back home.

‘Please?’ the man asks again. He is younger than Jemma first thought, probably about her own age. ‘I promise I won’t be long, and it would mean…’ He heaves out a heavy breath. ‘It’s for my daughter, you see.’

Against her better judgement, Jemma looks up and meets the man’s eye through the glass. He is gazing at her beseechingly, pleadingly, and she can tell he is shivering despite being well wrapped up in a thick scarf and gloves. She is struck by his eyes and how blue they are, and how the warm glow from the Christmas lights hung across the door softens them somehow.

Jemma groans inwardly.

She knew she shouldn’t have looked at him, because now she will have to let him in.

‘Five minutes,’ she warns, taking the key out of the lock and opening the door.

The man’s face sags with relief as he squeezes past her and into the shop. ‘Yes, yes, of course. Thank you so much, uh…’

He glances at her chest, hopefully in search of a name badge, but since she doesn’t wear one Jemma supplies it for him instead.

‘Jemma,’ he repeats gratefully. ‘I’m Fitz.’

Jemma thinks about saying that it is nice to meet him, then remembers that she is having to keep the shop open later to search for his missing book and decides against it. Instead, she nods at him with a grimace and gestures to the upper level of the shop.

‘Let’s find this book, shall we?’

‘Right! Yes…’

In his hurry to look for it, Fitz practically trips up the two steps to the mezzanine and a red woollen hat falls out of his pocket. Jemma picks it up and steps him, feeling the corners of her mouth twitch upwards in a half-smile.

She watches as Fitz passes the Christmas display to the left of the steps and she notes his cursory glance over it. It is the kind of glance Jemma knows all too well after her many years in a bookshop, it is the glance of a person searching for a particular title but not willing to let on that they’re looking for something special. Pursing her lips together, she follows him.

Fitz hesitates only momentarily in the middle of the shop, before making for the small room opposite the cash desk that constitutes the children’s department, but Jemma notices this indecision even so. Folding her arms, she tilts her head to one side.

‘Surely if something had been put to one side it would be behind the main desk?’ she suggests.

‘Ah…’ Fitz pauses again, one hand on the doorframe. There is a slight panicked look in his eyes, as though he has been caught with his hand in the biscuit tin. ‘I…don’t know. What do you think?’

By this point, Jemma has made up her mind. This man has not had anything put to one side, and he is lying about it to get her to keep the shop open, so he can pick out an incredibly last-minute gift. A profound indignance on behalf of all retail workers fills Jemma’s chest, and she decides that if he is so determined to keep her here, then she is perfectly at liberty to have a little fun at his expense.

‘Oh, I’m not sure,’ she says sweetly, before flashing him a wide-eyed smile. ‘Why don’t you check in the children’s corner anyway?’

Jemma is pretty sure that Fitz has cottoned on to her because he gulps, and slopes guiltily into the side-room. She follows him and stands in the doorway with her arms crossed, watching him rifle through the thick-stacked shelf of picture books.

‘Find it?’ she calls after a minute or two.

‘Uh…no.’ Fitz flicks through a couple more titles slightly more frantically. ‘Not yet.’

‘Hmm.’ Jemma pretends to think. ‘How about looking in the pirate chest?’

‘The pirate…?’

‘There.’ She points to the large, vintage trunk in the middle of the room. She’d found it at a junk shop several months ago, and bought it to display classics in. ‘Have a check.’

He glances cautiously up at her but does as she’d suggested anyway.

‘Is there anywhere else,’ he asks, a note of desperation in his voice, ‘that you might keep the children’s books?’

‘Check the top of the cupboard,’ Jemma suggests cheerfully. ‘Sometimes extra piles we can’t fit anywhere else get put there.’

She sees Fitz bite his lip, then, apparently deciding he has nothing else to lose, he grabs a nearby stool and places it in front of the cupboard. The top of it is piled high with cuddly toys, soft-faced rabbits and teddy bears that sold particularly well as gift packages with copies of _Guess How Much I Love You_ and _We’re Going on a Bear Hunt_. Fitz wrinkles up his nose and two bunny rabbits slip to the ground as he gingerly searches the top of the cupboard.

‘I don’t see any books up here,’ he says.

‘They’ll be underneath the toys,’ Jemma tells him. ‘Pick them up and see.’

‘Okay, fine,’ Fitz grumbles, lifting himself up onto his tiptoes to get a better reach, ‘but I really don’t think-‘

He is cut short by the leg of the stool catching on a hitch in the rug. It wobbles, and, balanced precariously on top of it, Fitz wobbles too. Jemma’s heart drops to her stomach as he grabs at the toys with a yelp, but before she can rush forward to grab him, he falls, tipping off the stool and falling sideways on to a pile of beanbags she had mercifully moved earlier that morning to squeeze in a new display of non-fiction.

‘Oh, God!’ She hurries across the room and drops to her knees beside him. ‘Are you alright?’

The beanbags squelch under Fitz’s weight as he struggles to sit up. ‘Yeah…yeah…’ He winces, one hand pressed to his side. ‘Just a little winded, that’s all.’

Guilt surges inside Jemma as she places an arm around his waist to help him upright. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says humbly. ‘I shouldn’t have made you do that at all, I was just-‘

‘I know.’ Fitz looks up at her. ‘You knew I was lying about being here earlier and having something put to one side, and you wanted to pay me back for it. Yeah?’

It is so clearly the truth that Jemma couldn’t deny it even if she wanted to.

‘Yes,’ she confesses. ‘I did. And I’m truly sorry, Fitz, really. It was wrong of me, and I didn’t mean for you to get you hurt.’

‘S’alright,’ he says. ‘No harm done. And I guess I really shouldn’t have lied to you in the first place.’ There is now a guilty look on his own face as he admits: ‘you’re a decent enough person to have listened if I’d told you the truth.’

His words, so casual with their compliment, spark an unexpected warmth in Jemma’s chest. Realising that she still has her arm around him, she quickly takes it away, feeling her skin tingle at the sudden loss of contact.

‘What is the truth?’ she asks softly, ‘if you don’t mind my asking.’

‘I think I kind of owe it to you now.’ Fitz gives a deep sigh. ‘I wasn’t lying when I said I was looking for a book for my daughter, that part was true. We only moved here a few months ago, and I’ve been really slow at unpacking.’ He shrugs, and glances down at his shoes. ‘As a single parent of a six-year-old, you don’t get a lot of free time for that kind of stuff.’

Feeling a fresh wave of remorse, Jemma bites her lip.

‘What’s your daughter’s name?’ she asks as a peace offering.

It works; Fitz’s face brightens.

‘Zoey,’ he tells her, and fishes his phone out of his pocket to show her his screensaver.

Leaning forward, Jemma sees the round face of a pretty little girl grinning at her. She has a missing front tooth and eyes as blue as her father’s. Even though it is just a picture, Jemma finds herself smiling back.

‘She’s beautiful,’ she says sincerely, and Fitz beams.

‘Yeah, she’s gorgeous. My best friend, really. And we have this tradition, every Christmas Eve, that I read her _The Night Before Christmas_ before she goes to sleep. She had this copy that she’d gotten when she was a baby, with all these illustrations and gold bits and everything, but when I went to unpack the last Christmas box this morning-‘

‘It wasn’t there,’ Jemma finishes for him, having guessed the end of this story almost immediately.

Fitz slumps back against the beanbags in defeat. ‘Yeah. It must have got left behind when we moved. But Zoey’s with my mum right now, expecting to go home and listen to the story and look at the pictures, and I just don’t know how I’m going to tell her that I’ve lost it.’

Jemma feels a pang of hurt for him, and reaches out to place one hand on his knee.

‘Hey,’ she says, ‘it’s not your fault. And I’m sure she’ll understand if you explain it to her. Ask her to choose a new tradition for the two of you to share! You could watch a Christmas film, or bake some snowmen biscuits. I have a wonderful recipe that you could borrow, if you like.’

Fitz laughs, but it is not a bitter one. When he looks up at her, Jemma can see the glimmer of hope in his eyes, which only makes her want to keep going.

‘I’m sure you can find that poem online too,’ she adds gently. ‘I know it won’t be the same, but at least that way you could still read it to her?’

‘Yeah.’ For the first time since he’d entered the shop, Fitz smiles, so genuinely and earnestly that it makes Jemma’s heart skip a beat. ‘Yeah, I could. I don’t know what I didn’t think of that before. Thank you.’

‘It’s alright.’ Jemma shrugs, hoping her cheeks aren’t as red as they feel. ‘Least I can do after leading you to certain death.’

She smiles back at him, and suddenly the world seems to narrow to just the two of them, sitting amid a pile of soft toys on Christmas Eve. To Jemma, it feels like a moment that could stretch on into forever. But then Fitz clears his throat, and it is gone.

‘I think I’ll have to take that biscuit recipe to go,’ he says, almost apologetically. ‘Mum and Zoey are probably wondering where I’ve got to.’

‘Oh! Of course.’

With a twinge of disappointment for reasons she can’t quite place, Jemma gets to her feet and holds out her hands. Fitz takes them, and lets her heave him out of the beanbags and to his feet, letting go of her hands a moment later than he could have done. Noticing this, Jemma smiles to herself.

‘I’m sorry again,’ Fitz says, as she leads him back out into the main shop. ‘For lying, and also for making you stay here…’ He checks his watch. ‘Almost half-an-hour later, on Christmas Eve of all days.’

Jemma gives a soft laugh. ‘It wasn’t a problem,’ she reassures him, and she means it too. ‘I only wish I could have done more to help.’

Fitz smiles at her, and Jemma sees a flicker of uncertainty pass over his features and wonders whether he is going to say something more. But then he shakes his head, seeming to have decided against it.

‘You’ve been great,’ he says. ‘Thank you for everything.’

It is just as he turns to go down the steps that the idea comes to Jemma, and she gasps before grabbing at his coat sleeve.

‘Fitz, wait!’

‘What?’ he turns back to her, his face filled with alarm. ‘What is it, are you okay?’

‘Yes, yes, I’m fine.’ Jemma presses her hands to her face as her mind races. ‘It’s just I think I know where a copy of _The Night Before Christmas_ could be.’

Fitz’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘Really? Where?’

‘There’s an old box of Christmas stock I put upstairs yesterday. I think I remember seeing the title there!’

‘Really?’ Briefly, Fitz’s face falls. ‘Wait, this isn’t just a ploy to get me upstairs so that you can push me out of the window, is it?’

 Jemma laughs. ‘Fitz, I promise you it isn’t.’ Reaching out, she grabs hold of his hand. ‘And to prove it to you, I will go first.’

Gently, she tugs him across the room and up the rickety wooden stairs to the first floor. Hand in hand, they pass the shelves heaving with alphabetically organised adult fiction until they reach the door that leads to the stockroom. Here, Jemma has to drop Fitz’s hand to unlock it, and once she has, she steps shyly back to allow him inside.

Fitz’s excitement seems to have risen again; he is bouncing on the balls of his feet as he waits for her to follow him.

‘So, um, where’s this box?’

Jemma flicks the light switch and the bulb above their heads splutters to life, illuminating the rather dingy back room. Quickly, she scans her memory, trying to remember where she’d shoved the rather unremarkable box that might just contain a remarkable gift for a little girl.

‘Over here,’ she decides, hopping over a plastic container filled with the shop’s Halloween decorations to a promising looking corner. She points to one cardboard box as she pulls another one towards her. ‘Do you want to check that one? I’ll look in this.’

‘Sure.’ Fitz rips the duct tape off the top of the box and peers inside. ‘It’s a pretty great shop down there, by the way,’ he adds, glancing quickly up at her. ‘I love most bookshops, but this one…it feels special.’

Jemma feels herself swell with pride, and she grins at him over her box. ‘I’m so glad you think that. I think it’s pretty special too.’

‘Have you, um, worked here long?’

‘It’s been seven years,’ Jemma tells him. ‘I started part-time while I was at university, and now I basically run the place.’

It is not a boast, she tells herself, since it’s true. The old manager still owns the store and handles legalities, but other than that they only employ one other member of staff, an art student who runs the shop on Sundays, and sometimes Mack next-door will step in if she needs to pop out for an hour or two. Other than that, it is just her.

‘Wow.’ Fitz sounds genuinely impressed. ‘That’s pretty incredible.’

‘Yes,’ Jemma agrees. ‘It is.’

‘Does it ever get lonely? Doing it just by yourself?’

Jemma pauses. She has never really thought about it before, but now that he has mentioned it, she realises that it does. She wonders whether today would have been quite as bad if she’d had someone to chat to behind the front desk, someone to giggle with about the hideous Christmas jumpers people walking by were wearing. She wonders if she’d feel quite so bad about leaving if she had someone to go home to.

‘Yes,’ she admits, a little quieter. ‘I suppose sometimes it does.’

She doesn’t look up, but she can feel Fitz’s eyes on her and she is about to say something slightly less self-pitying when the title of a book right at the bottom of the box catches her eye and she almost laughs out loud.

‘Fitz,’ she says. ‘I’ve found it.’

‘Wait, seriously?’

When she nods, Fitz crawls eagerly over to her side and sits back on his heels as Jemma digs the book out. It is a slim hardback, with a gorgeous illustration of Father Christmas in his sleigh flying high over a snow-covered cottage on the front. Its title is spelt out in embossed gold lettering, which Fitz runs his fingers over as she holds it out to him: _The Night Before Christmas._

‘You found it,’ he says in awe.

Jemma smiles at him. One of the things she loves best about her job is finding things for people: their next favourite book, the best book to buy for their mothers, the childhood classic whose title they’d forgotten. The perfect gift. As she presses the book into Fitz’s hands, Jemma realises that finding it for him to give to his daughter has made her happier than anything has all day.

‘Yeah,’ she whispers. ‘I guess I did.’

Fitz returns the smile, and, with only the slightest hesitation, reaches out to squeeze her hand.

‘Thank you.’

They leave the squalid stockroom and clamber back down the stairs together. Once they reach the ground floor, Fitz seems to remember where they are and starts to pat down his pockets.

‘Um, how much…?’

Realising what he is asking, Jemma quickly shakes her head.

‘Oh, Fitz, no. It’s yours. Or rather, it’s Zoey’s.’ She grins. ‘A Christmas gift from me.’

‘No, no,’ he protests. ‘I couldn’t…’

Shaking her head, Jemma moves to the cash desk and takes a brown paper bag out from under the counter. She slips the book into it and places it firmly into his hand.

‘Of course you can.’

Fitz exhales slowly, a ghost of a smile passing over his face. He hesitates.

‘Listen, I realise that we’ve only just met and that you’ve probably got a million other, better things to be doing tomorrow, but on the off chance that you don’t…would you like to come and have Christmas dinner with us? With me and Zoey, I mean.’

Momentarily, Jemma finds herself speechless.

‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly,’ she says, her heart beginning to hammer beneath her jumper. ‘I couldn’t impose myself on you two, not on such a special day.’

‘You wouldn’t be!’ Fitz assures her earnestly. ‘I promise.’

‘Fitz, really.’ Jemma wonders if he can read in her face how much she wants to say yes. ‘I couldn’t.’

He smiles at her. ‘Of course you can.’

It takes Jemma a split second to make up her mind as to what to do next. Drawing in a deep breath, she steps forward, places both her hands on his neck and kisses him.

Clearly Fitz hadn’t been expecting this, because she hears his paper bag hit the floor, and for a moment Jemma thinks that she has made a terrible mistake, and that he will quickly pull away. But then she feels his arms slide around her back to pull her closer, and then he kisses her back.

Fitz’s lips are warm and soft, and each time they press against her own they are like snowflakes; individual, unique, yet exactly what they are meant to be. His hands have splayed across her back, and as she wraps her arms around his neck, Jemma can feel his heart racing through his jacket. Standing as she is on the step above him, she realises how easy it would be for him to lift her up and carry her off into the night. As he moves one hand to the nape of her neck to gently deepen the kiss, it strikes her how much she wishes he would.

If she’s entirely honest with herself, she’s been wanting to kiss him like this since the very moment he’d walked through the door, and not just because of the way his eyes had shone in the Christmas lights. She kisses him for his kindness, for his devotion to making his daughter’s Christmas the best it could be. She kisses him because she’d been wishing for a miracle this Christmas, and she is beginning to think that she has found one.

They pull apart slowly, their noses brushing and their breathing ragged. Jemma opens her eyes gingerly, just in time to watch a smile spread slowly across Fitz’s face before he blinks his own eyes open. His gaze falls on her immediately, and warms her right to the bone.

‘How about Boxing Day instead?’ he offers hoarsely.

Jemma chuckles, and bends her head to kiss him again.

‘Boxing Day it is.’

They exchange numbers and Fitz texts her his address. He assures her that she doesn’t need to bring anything, but already Jemma is planning the batch of biscuits she will make tomorrow morning, and how she will decorate them to best resemble snowmen and reindeer.

They kiss again on the doorstep, Fitz’s hand now finding a familiar place to hold her at her waist and Jemma’s fingers just brushing the slight stubble on his cheeks.

‘Merry Christmas, Jemma,’ Fitz mumbles against her lips, and Jemma smiles at the warmth of his breath against her skin in the cold evening air.

‘Merry Christmas, Fitz.’

It feels like she is floating as she drifts around the shop once he is gone, unplugging the lights from the tree and placing the till money in the safe. Jemma can still feel her lips tingling as she shrugs on her coat and wraps her scarf around her neck, pulling her bag onto her shoulder.

She is about to leave when the sight of Fitz’s red woollen hat catches her eye, still sitting where she had left it on the floor of the children’s department. Taking it into her hands, she rubs her fingers over the soft wool and smiles, before pulling it carefully down over her ears. She will be able to return it the day after tomorrow.

Outside the shop’s backdoor, Jemma is just turning the key into the last lock when something white and cold lands on the back of her glove. Blinking, she glances upwards into the black of the night and gasps. The temperature has dropped, and the rain from earlier has turned into a delicate, light snowfall.

It won’t settle, the ground is too wet and the snowflakes too few for it to turn into a blizzard, but still. It is snow on Christmas Eve, and as Jemma makes her way down the deserted high street, it is as close to a miracle as she could ever have wished for.

 

 


End file.
